gentetip

Dubai is a city of many faces: towering office and hotel skyscrapers and oriental bustle in Bur Dubai, the old town quarter. Mubashir Malik came here from Pakistan when he was just 18. He had heard a lot about Dubai: A place, where a lot of money can be earned, without being especially qualified. Now he has been driving a water taxi on the Dubai Creek for the past four years and feels like a rich man.
Brothers Arif and Faisal Matraushi are both passionate fishermen. Arif fishes from the evening to midnight, while Faisal drives to the Dubai fish market every morning at 3 a.m. to sell the catch.

Jeremy Sabaneer has worked his way up. He is manager of the "Leba-non" island in the middle of the "World", as Dubai's ambitious offshore island project is known. Jeremy began here more than 15 years ago, as a Pakistani migrant worker. Now he has his hands full. A bank has rented his party island for a company event. Jeremy takes to the air with water plane pilot Andrew Kennedy to check his world from above. And in the desert location of Lahbab, "mareTV" encounters racing camel coaches. Since the protests against the use of children as jockeys became more violent, they now replaced them with robots. High tech in a traditional sport. Typical Dubai….

Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean. The Sardin-ians themselves say it's a "continent for itself", a virtual world of its own, full of magic: A beach, gleaming in unreal pink shades, red corals protect against the evil eye and the inhabitants seem to remain forever young. On Sardinia, the owners of luxury yachts adopt sheep, fish have gold in their bellies and a giant mussel supplies the material for legendary sea silk. No one is surprised, that the Madonna goes on a sea cruise once a year.

Murmansk, the metropolis on the Barents Sea, is anything but Russia's cold north. There's always something going on here, for example the Olympic Polar Games. Ice surfing and ice swimming, reindeer racing, the first atom ice breaker in the history of the world, a corner shop in ice and snow, endearing village school lessons and the singing Norwegian Sea Fleet - arctic lifestyle far away, north of the polar circle.

The palm tree laden beaches on Mexico's Riviera Maya on the Yucatan peninsula are endless, and the turquoise sea with its gentle Caribbean surf is a warm 25 degrees during the mild winter in this part of the world. Between Cancún and Punta Allen, where once there was little more than bushland and a few sleepy fishing villages, vibrant life has evolved during the past three decades.
Richard Sowa has lived on a floating island for the past 15 years: an island he built himself out of empty plastic bottles. The bon vivant him-self sees it as a "solution for our planet's refuse problem".
Off Punta Allen, a village in the bay of Sian Ka'an, Mexican Mara Coral Ley and her cousin Kim, continue to catch lobsters by adhering to the traditional method and were awarded an "Eco seal for sustainable fishing" for their trouble.
It is silent under water off Isla Mujeres and it is here that the artist Jason deCaires has constructed a sculpture park. Hundreds of lifesize figures form an artificial reef at a depth of 12 metres. Fish and plants complete his work of art. The master himself is convinced: "Mother Nature is the true artist".

The second part of the journey from Croatia goes from the island of Vis to Dubrovnik. At the time of communist Yugoslavia, but also long before, Vis was restricted due to its excellent strategic position. Also Tito's partisan army had its headquarters in a cave in Mount Hum. The waters around Vis count to the most fishy of the Adriatic. Far above its regional boundaries, however, Vis is neither known for its wine nor for the rich fish rich in the sea.

The Blue Grotto of Bisevo is the main reason for many tourists coming from Split or from the surrounding islands. Makarska is the most famous tourist resort on the Croatian Riviera. After the war in Croatia in the 1990s, the city was modernized with great effort. The historic old town experienced an addition to new hotels, restaurants and shops. With an area of ​​396 square kilometers, Brac is the third largest island of the Adriatic and the largest of Croatia.

The "goldene Horn", a sandhorn about 300 m long, is the tourist landmark. However, Brac is known worldwide, especially among the handworkers. The white house in Washington / USA was built from the snow-white Bracer limestone. Another important place is the island of Korcula. The parents of Marco Polo, the most important seafarer of European history, lived here. Whether her famous son was born here, is not handed down. Highlight of this part of the trip to Croatia is the visit of the city of Dubrovnik, the city of churches and monasteries.

The British Virgin Islands belong to the Lesser Antilles and are a dream for bon-vivants and the super-rich: Caribbean nonchalance, combined with British understatement. Moko Jumbies, mysterious spectre ejectors, dancing in the light of the fire. They are fantastic entities on stilts, more than four metres tall. The group only takes commands from Shevorn, a descendent of the slaves that the Dutch once abducted to the Virgin Islands.
The slaves brought something new with them to the Caribbean: the belief in ghosts. The services of the Moko Jumbies are still sought after to this day. On uninhabited Salt Island, Alexandra Durante harvests salt from the lagoon. Back home on Tortola, the largest island in the archipelago, she boils and stirs bath essences and other homemade beauty products out of the gained sea salt. In the Callwood distillery in Sugar Cane Bay, Callum and Andrew heat up an old copper vat. A few hours later and a fine trickle flows out of a narrow pipe: rum!
Another bay further on, Egbert Donovan plucks the strings of his ukulele: Soca music with a stomping rhythm and sparse lyrics. This is how Egbert unwinds after working on his lifetime project, the Molluscs Museum.

The Santorini archipelago is a gem, but is located on a veritable powder keg. It is only a matter of time before the volcano, the crater rim of which gave us this island world, erupts again. Since January 2011, threatening rumblings have been perceived beneath the archipelago.
On Santorini, it's a case of getting nowhere fast without a mule. Whether the restaurant terraces above the abyss of Oia, the hotels on the breath-taking cliffs of Imerovigli or Firostefani, it was only with the help of the stubborn climbing artists, that these daring constructions were made possible. Antonis Vlachos has ten strong mules that work for him. He transports almost everything with them: stones, food or the typically blue paint for the church domes.
Santorini is a tourist magnet and up to five cruise ships call in at the islands daily. However, there is no port, just a narrow, concrete quay. Without the tender boats, no guests would ever reach the shore.

Over 1.3 billion people live in China and they travel with large speed into the future. No other country in the world develops so dynamically into a complete industrial nation. But the modern society also preserves her traditions which still shows traces of the influences from western civilizations.

The documentary leads to the south of China to Macao as well as to the provinces Hunan, Guizhou and Sichuan. The landscapes in these regions of China are overwhelming. They reach from the national forest park Zhangjiajie, the Yellowstone park of China with its bizarre rock towers, up to the Karst mountains of the park of the seven stars. The authorities permitted with an unexpected frankness to film the everyday life of the Chinese and to participate in spectacular culture events. Also the team was allowed to have a critical glance at such out- dated habits like the manufacture of products from shark fins for men who still believe that using them will improve their sexual power.

Picturesque houses in Fenghuang impress as well as the highest stone made Buddha statue in the world. Highlight is the visit of a Panda Bear Sanctuary which successfully practices a breeding programme to save the species from extinction.